Homily for Baptism of Clare Welsh

Homily for the Baptism
of Clare Anna Marie Welsh

Nov. 24, 2019

John 9: 1-7
St. Thomas More Cathedral, Arlington, Va.                                            

Jesus walked along and saw a man born blind (John 9:1).  Jesus sees who this man is, but the man living in darkness cannot see Jesus and, as the story goes on to tell us, doesn’t have a developed idea of who Jesus is (9:25).  He’s blind on 2 levels.

by Francesco de Mura

The man’s blindness is neither his own fault or sin, nor his parents’ (9:3).  It was a common perception—way of seeing—in the Jewish world that you got what you had coming to you.  It really was a desperate attempt to explain the unexplainable.

But Jesus gives another explanation entirely.  God will show forth his way of working among us thru this man (9:3).  Whatever is out of sorts in our world, God will somehow set it right and reveal his rule, his lordship—or, as we say today, his kingship.

Jesus comments on his own presence in our dark world.  The powers of darkness are battling against hm; he knows this and does what he can to “do the deeds of the one who sent him while it is day” (9:4).  And it is day “while I am in the world” as its light (9:5).

That he is the light and giver of light he will make evident momentarily by healing the blind man, making him “able to see” (9:7).

John goes on in his very long chapter—it’s ch. 9 in case you’d like to read the entire story—to show us that the man has been healed on 2 levels, for he comes to see that Jesus is the Messiah (cf. 9:35-38).  The Jewish leaders cannot perceive that and remain in spiritual blindness (9:40-41).

In this sacrament of Baptism, which the Eastern Churches often call “Enlightenment,” a person receives the light of Christ.  We have a ritual component that will bring that out.  Christ’s light reveals the Father to us—his goodness, his power, his beauty—and reveals our relationship with the Father thru our relationship with Christ.  We become daughters or sons of God thru the Only-begotten Son.

Now we walk in Christ’s light in order to be his continuing light in the world.  “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”  He himself tells his followers:  “You are the light of the world.  A city built on a mountaintop cannot be hidden” (Matt 5:14), and we aren’t to be hidden but to let our light shine before the world so that everyone who sees it may see thru us the one who is truly the light.

Coincidentally, you’ve named your little one Clare, after Santa Chiara of Assisi.  The name means “clear, bright.”  May God our Father always make her a luminous, radiant light-bearer in this world, and may she shine in Christ’s light for eternity.

Homily for Solemnity of Christ the King

Homily for the Solemnity of
Christ the King

Nov. 24, 2019

Luke 23: 35-43
Nativity, Washington, D.C.

“Above him there was an inscription that read, ‘This is the King of the Jews’” (Luke 23: 38).

by Velasquez

We place that inscription on our crucifixes, a scroll with the initials INRI, Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (John 19:19).  It was placed on his cross as a warning from the Roman masters of the Jews concerning what happens to those who resist Rome, and as a mockery of Jesus’ supposed pretensions—mocking both him and probably also meant as a dig at the Jewish leaders.

The irony of the mockery of the Roman and Jewish leaders is that on the cross Jesus of Nazareth really did become king, not of the Jewish people alone but of all of humanity, even all of creation.  He came to the cross because of his complete submission to his Father:  “He humbled himself,” an ancient Christian hymn sang, “becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8), and from the cross he continued that submission by forgiving those responsible for the gross injustice of his passion and execution and by imitating the boundless mercy of his Father, offering paradise (Luke 23:43) to the justly condemned criminal (Luke 23:41).

Because of his obedience “even unto death on a cross,” and because he had completely attuned his life to his Father’s will, “God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,” that ancient Christian hymn continues, so that every human being should acclaim Jesus of Nazareth as Jesus Christ, Lord (Phil 2: 9,11).

As for that criminal, unlucky enuf to suffer the disgrace and the horror of Roman crucifixion, blessed enuf to find himself at Jesus’ side, we know absolutely nothing about him beyond what Matthew, Mark, and Luke report.  Some early Christians told stories about him, passed on to us in the apocryphal gospels—writings from the 1st and 2d centuries telling stories about Jesus’ life and teachings that the Church never accepted as authentic; so those stories, e.g., that the robber’s name was Dismas, are probably total fabrications.  Matthew and Mark call the 2 “bandits” or “robbers,” implying they were violent men.  Luke is less descriptive—they’re “wrongdoers” or “criminals.”  We commonly call this one “the good thief” because of his repentance, and some say, “He stole heaven.”  He fits what St. Paul wrote to the Christians of Colossae:  “The Father has made you fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light” (Col 1:12).  God has “made him fit,” not the criminal’s own merits.

It’s also ironic that 2 of Jesus’ closest followers, James and John, had asked him for places at his right and his left when he would come into his kingdom.  He told them that those places had already been assigned to others.  We see on Golgotha who’s got those 2 places:  2 outlaws.

The Good Thief, by Titian

What’s important isn’t their names or their back stories.  What’s important is that this one wrongdoer turns to Jesus and asked to be remembered in his kingdom.  Evidently he’s not talking about an earthly kingdom, as James and John were, because he know that in a few hours both of them will be dead.  So he’s looking further, looking to the eternal kingdom where Jesus will reign, not as king of the Jews but as king of all who look to him for forgiveness and healing.  The forgiveness and hope that Jesus already offers to this wretched criminal is a sign of his royal prerogative, the power of clemency.  So Jesus reigns even from the cross.

The “good thief” is held up before us as an example of repentance.  Whatever’s in our past, we need only surrender to our Lord Jesus, king, giving into his hands our sins with a heartfelt plea, “Remember me; receive me, too, into your kingdom.”  The Father makes any of us “fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light, delivering us from the power of darkness and transferring us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:12-14).

The Lord Jesus, king, has left his Church the beautiful ministry of forgiveness, of royal clemency.  In the sacrament of Reconciliation, he comes to us with his mercy, comes again to reign in our hearts and our lives.  We approach the confessional like the crucified criminal, pleading, “Jesus, remember me.”  And he does.  He forgives and promises us, too, a place with him in paradise.

Homily for 33d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
33d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Nov. 17, 2019

Mal 3: 19-20
St. Anthony, Bronx, N.Y.

“Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven” (Mal 3:19).

Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets chronologically—he preached in the 5th century B.C.—is also placed last among the books of the Old Testament in the arrangement of our Bibles.  The verse and a half that make up our 1st reading today come close to the end of his very short book.

Malachi (James Tissot, partial)

The reading—the prophecy—is about the day of the Lord, which we also know as “the last day” and “judgment day.”  Like most of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi lived in a disordered world, afflicted by various social injustices and, of course, the normal afflictions of human life—people trying to make a living, raise a family, stay healthy, and live tranquilly in their towns and villages.  In particular, Malachi addresses religious laxity—people and even priests either ignoring their religious obligations like sacrifice, worship, adherence to the Torah, and marital fidelity, or carrying them out carelessly.

So Malachi warns the people and priests of Judah that the day of the Lord is coming (3:19), a day when God will put everything right, punish evildoers, and reward the just (3:19-20).

We Christians see Malachi’s prophecy fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ.  The prophet says that “ the sun of justice” (or “the sun of righteousness”) will arise (3:20).  We recognize our Lord Jesus as that sun, that light from heaven, the dawn that drives away the darkness of our lives, purifies our hearts, and shows us how to make the situation of men and women even on this earth more tranquil, more just, happier.  When John the Baptist, forerunner of the Messiah, is born, his father Zechariah prophesies, “You, child, … will give his people knowledge of salvation thru the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the daybreak from on high will visit us to shine on those who sit in darkness and death’s shadow…” (Luke 1:76-79).  That “daybreak from on high” for which John the Baptist will prepare God’s people is Christ.

Malachi prophesies that this salvation, this “sun of justice with its healing rays,” is coming on the day of the Lord for those “who fear [his] name” (3:30).  But that warm and bright sun will not heal “the proud and all evildoers” (3:19); it will, instead, burn them like stubble in an oven—the stalks left after the grain has been threshed, and the remnants, the stubble or chaff, is used as fuel for baking the daily bread.

A couple of verses later, Malachi warns his audience, “Remember the law of Moses my servant, which I enjoined upon him at [Mt. Sinai], the statutes and ordinances for all Israel” (3:22).

All of us have come here in order to worship God thru the eternal sacrifice of our Lord Jesus and to renew our pledges of fidelity to God’s statutes and ordinances and to the truths of our faith taught to us by Jesus and his Church.  We acknowledge that this worship and this fidelity is what justifies us, enrolls us among the just, lets the healing rays of Christ’s warmth touch us and prep us for the day of his coming.

The day of the Lord is indeed coming.  Jesus promised to return, and we profess our belief in that every time we recite the Creed:  “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.”  His coming and his judgment are most famously depicted on the wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican—a painting that cardinals face as they cast their votes in a papal election.

As Malachi warns, that judgment will not be a healing justification or purification for “the proud and all evildoers”; a judgment of condemnation for them.  Jesus speaks of that judgment in some of his parables and on other occasions.  We heard one of those parables on Sept. 29, the one about the rich man and poor Lazarus the beggar (Luke 16:19-31).  Not for nothing do we speak of hellfire, of eternal punishment for proud, unrepentant sinners.  It’s no joke, but more awful and unending than we can imagine—burning with hatred for everyone, including ourselves, everlasting remorse for all the wrong we’ve ever done deliberately, suffering pain in our hearts far worse that any physical pain we’ve ever known—and all thru our own fault, as we say in the Confiteor, thru our own choices.  Hell is eternal separation from God, for whom we were created, and so it is eternal frustration of our most ardent desire.  It is eternal separation from and a loathing for anyone we ever loved.

But God has sent us “the sun of justice with its healing rays,” so that we might turn away from our wrongdoing, our deliberate evil choices, our sins, and allow the mercy of our Lord Jesus to heal us and lead us into his own holiness and toward eternal life—as Jesus did, for example, in our gospel reading 2 weeks ago when he welcomed the tax collector Zacchaeus, dined with him, and stayed at his house (Luke 19:1-10).  As he said to the apostles at the Last Supper, he’s gone ahead of us “to prepare a place for you, and … I shall return to take you to myself” (John 14:2-3).

Homily for 32d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
32d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Nov. 12, 1989

2 Macc 7: 1-2, 9-14
Holy Cross, Fairfield, Conn.

This Sunday (Nov. 10) I celebrated Mass for Boy Scouts in Putnam Valley, N.Y.  Here’s a 30-year-old homily on the same readings.

Heroes are very important to us.  We admire them, hold them up as examples, celebrate holidays in their honor.  We can think of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Connecticut’s Nathan Hale, firemen and police officers.  Yesterday was Veteran’s Day, and we honored all those who have served in the armed forces.  About a week ago a new monument was dedicated in Montgomery, Ala., honoring all those who worked for civil rights during the ’50s and ’60s, especially those who died in the cause.

What makes people like these heroes?  They risk danger.  They risk their health and their lives to do what’s right or to serve their fellow citizens.  They are moved to action by a powerful love.

Martyrdom of the Seven Maccabees (Antonio Ciseri, 1863)

The Old Testament reading presented some Jewish heroes to us: 7 brothers and their mother who died for what they believed.  A wicked king was trying to force all the Jews to abandon their religion and worship the pagan gods of the Greeks.  Many Jews suffered torture and death rather than deny the true God and his special love for them.

The apostles and many thousands of the early Christians were killed because they wouldn’t renounce their belief in Christ or disobey his commands.  Today people are still tortured and killed for following Christ, for opposing injustice: in South Africa, in El Salvador, in Red China.  Today, here in the U.S., people are arrested, fined, and jailed for defending unborn human life.

Heroes take a stand for what they believe.  Anybody can follow the crowd.  It’s heroic to oppose the crowd, or to lead the crowd, out of deep conviction, out of love for truth, for justice, for human dignity, for Jesus Christ, who described himself as “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).

Sometimes we, too, like those Jewish heroes, like Jesus, like the Christian martyrs, have to stand up for what’s right.  We probably won’t be killed for it—tho civil rights martyrs of the 60s remind us that we could be.  But we could risk unpopularity or ridicule by defending someone whose skin is a different color or who speaks a different language or who has a physical handicap.  We could risk unpopularity by maintaining that unborn babies are human beings, persons entitled to life, liberty and a chance to pursue happiness.

We take a stand when we speak the truth when it’s easy to lie, when we obey instead of doing something that’s fun but forbidden, when we pay attention in school even tho others like to fool around.  When people pressure us to do something that’s wrong—to shoplift, to cheat on a test, to smoke, to see a dirty movie—it’s heroic to say no and risk being called a nerd.

But in the end, people remember only heroes, the Washingtons and M.L. Kings.  No one remembers the wishy-washy people, the wimps who only followed the crowd, who didn’t care what’s right or wrong, who had no thing, no person, no value to live for, or die for, except themselves.

Maybe a lot of people don’t care whether they’re remembered or not.  Some people say it’s better to be a live coward than a dead lion.  But the mother and the 7 heroic brothers remind us of something far more important: they told the wicked king:  “You’re depriving us of this present life, but the King of the universe will raise us up to live again forever” (2 Macc 7:9).  Thanks to God’s eternal love for us and, especially, thanks to Jesus Christ, we live in the hope of real immortality: resurrection and eternal life.  When we stand up for what’s right and good, we’re volunteering for life, a life already won for us by our Savior Jesus Christ.

Homily for 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
31st Sunday of Ordinary Time

October 30, 1977

Wis 11: 22—12: 2
Luke 19: 1-10

St. Andrew, Upper Arlington, Ohio

I was a recently ordained deacon when I preached this homily.

“You are merciful for all, for you can do all things, and you overlook men’s sins, that they may repent” (Wis 11: 23).

Last Sunday and today our Mass readings have focused on sin and forgiveness.  This theme is an important one for us Christians because we are all sinners.  Only when we admit that we are sinners and repent can we be forgiven.

The reading from the Old Testament Book of Wisdom is taken from a long section which details how God punished both unbelievers and the Chosen People for their sins in the past.  Wisdom implies that men have to be obstinate sinners before God will punish them, and even then his punishment is relatively mild.  Our reading stresses that the Lord always is patient with us, allowing us time to repent of our misdeeds and return to him.  It gives a reason for his patience: his mercy is part of his creative power; he made us, and he loves us.

First, his mercy.  How do we react when someone offends us?  Usually I get angry, maybe very angry.  I may retaliate—verbally, physically, by the silent treatment, by avoiding the person who has hurt me.  In short, I lose control of my situation.  I feel a need to protect myself somehow, and my reactions dictate to me how to do that.  Only with time do my feelings subside.  If the offender asks my pardon, I may give it reluctantly, out of a sense of obligation, but even then my feelings pull me hard.

God is different—lucky for us! Although we are all offenders before him, he is no Gestapo agent ready to pounce on us at the smallest sign of rebellion on our part.  That’s how insecure people act.  Our God, the God of the Book of Wisdom, is powerful and sure.  He can do all things. He is master of what we would call feelings or reactions in ourselves.  He can be merciful toward us regardless of what we try to do to him.  He made us, and he loves us. He encourages us to repent.  He wants to forgive.  Instead of retaliating, he sends us reminders and warnings: our consciences, a word from a friend, a sacrament, a sermon, a child’s innocence, a family or business problem, who knows what…but certainly no fierce attack by all the forces of heaven and earth, followed by instant damnation.  Life’s not a divine Monopoly game where one wrong number turns up a Chance card that orders us, “Go directly to hell; do not pass GO; do not collect $200.”  God doesn’t need that sort of self-protection against us.  He shows us his power by being gracious and merciful toward us.

Second, we must repent.  Repentance isn’t just an “I’m sorry,” as important as that is.  Repentance is far more radical.  It is a conversion, a complete turnaround—which is the literal meaning of the Greek that the Bible uses.  We see our sinful state, and we reject it.  We turn around again toward God and his mercy.  The tax collector Zacchaeus is a fine example of repentance.  A gentle word from Jesus, some recognition, is all he needed.  Jesus shows us how God handles repentant sinners.  Imagine!  Jesus is so sure of the situation that he even invited himself to supper at Zacchaeus’s house.  In Jesus’ time, tax collectors were notorious for defrauding the public and making themselves rich.  Whatever the injustice involved, it was all quite legal.  Zacchaeus promises to restore what he has taken wrongly, restore it four times over, and to give half of his abundance to the poor.  Quite a conversion!  And it all results from a gentle reminder from a merciful Savior.

That same merciful Savior is speaking to us today.  If we have done something grievously offensive to him, he awaits us in the sacrament of repentance—what we usually call confession.  The Church has recently renewed this sacrament in order to enable us to turn around our lives toward Christ more easily.  If we find so-called “ordinary” or “venial” sin in ourselves, the part and parcel of our daily lives, Jesus still invites us to repent, but he also reverses the hospitality between Zacchaeus and himself: he invites us this morning to join his sacred meal and to give thanks with him to a merciful Father.

A First Look at Amazon Special Synod

A First Look at Amazon Special Synod
Analysis of Fr. Rossano Sala, SDB

(ANS – Rome – October 30) – A few days after the closure of the Synod of Bishops on the Pan-Amazon region, Fr. Rossano Sala, SDB, who participated in the Synod at the invitation of the Holy Father, presented an analysis of this important ecclesial appointment.

The cry of the poor and of the earth

Last Sunday at the Angelus, Pope Francis said that “the cry of the poor, together with that of the earth, reached us from the Amazon.” In my soul, the force of several interventions of individual synod fathers who brought us the cry of the poor and of the earth have remained impressed; together, I am very grateful for the wealth of work done in the small discussion group to which I belonged; Pope Francis’s words were edifying at some moments, because he pushed us to deal with what’s essential.

A combination of the last two synods

It is natural for me to observe the two synods in which I took part: the synod on young people and, this year, the Synod on the Amazon. The first was “ordinary”; the second “special.” In the first I was special secretary, hence engaged from the beginning of the process and a protagonist in writing the Final Document; in the second I was a “simple” Synod Father. In the first, there were young auditors, and their voice was strong, lively, and purposeful; in the second, there were indigenous auditors, women, and community animators who brought the concreteness of their faith experience.

I realized with increasingly more strength that the problems of all are the problems of each and that every small part of the Church is a fragment that refers to the whole.

The two lungs of this Synod

As in the body we have two lungs to breathe with; even in the Synod on the Amazon we had two lungs. The first lung is called Evangelii gaudium, a document that marks the missionary turning point that Pope Francis is giving to the whole life of the Church. It is a matter of understanding that mission is the life of the Church and that the Church herself exists to evangelize. The second lung is called Laudato sì, and we know that this document seeks to make everyone aware of the really critical situation of our mother earth in these first decades of the third millennium.

Indeed, the Final Document of the Synod starts from the concept of “integral conversion” and then develops it in the following four chapters: at the pastoral, cultural, ecological, and synod levels.

Generate processes rather than occupy spaces

We know that the Synod is a “walking together,” not a “deciding together.” Then the Pope, in full freedom, decides which parts to adopt and indicates how to proceed, concluding the discernment and re-launching it from the operational point of view.

Knowing this is important to overcome the sterile polemics that fill newspaper headlines. Beyond the proposals and suggestions contained in the Final Document, it’s important to recognize that this Synod has not really ended, but has inaugurated processes that will necessarily have to continue.

The promised land is always before us, and only by walking together can we reach it. This thought will also be good for the Salesian Family, called to assume synodality and discernment as a concrete style of living and working together for years to come.

The complete text of Fr. Sala’s reflection is available in the Italian version of the in-depth study.

Homily for Solemnity of All Saints

Homily for the Solemnity
of All Saints

Nov. 1, 2019

Rev 7: 2-4, 9-12
1 John 3: 1-3
Matt 5: 1-12
Christian Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.

Those saved from God’s wrath have been sealed, sealed with Christ’s saving blood, like the blood that marked the doors of the Hebrews in Egypt.  They’re a very large number from Israel, as we heard in the reading from Revelation (7:4), plus “a great multitude which no one could count” from the rest of the world (7:9)—all those sealed who persevered faithfully in following the Lamb (7:9-12).

Our relationship with the Lamb, with Christ, makes us children of God (1 John 3:1-2), but God has in mind something more, which we can’t even imagine:  “what we shall be has not yet been revealed” (3:2), but we shall somehow become more like God, like Christ.  We know that God created us in his own image (Gen 1:27), but by our sins we’ve marred that image.  By the grace of Christ, that image, the image of Christ himself—will be full restored.

We start to reflect that image of Christ inasmuch as we speak and act like him.  He gives us clear instructions for our speech and actions and even our thinking in the Beatitudes.  Pope Francis has told us that the Beatitudes are like the 10 Commandments for us.  They’re not optional.

They are in one sense more difficult than the Commandments.  They’re somewhat vague.  We all know what idolatry, murder, and adultery are.  Poverty of spirit, meekness, and peacemaking are harder to define.  But they’re certainly attitudes and behaviors to pray for and strive for.  The Beatitudes are the path to beatitude, to bliss, to heavenly joy—to our becoming images of Christ, saints.